It is no exaggeration to say that workplace politics exist in every single companies in the world, which is know-how for human-beings to get on in harsh competitive environment to win through a promotion race.
Scheming to take advantage of human’s mental tendency to only make things beneficial to yourself to win a certain post is always common to survive in a promotion race regardless of which country you belong to. This is how human beings are.
Companies in Japan has also workplace politics. Using sycophancy to boss, kicking colleagues out of a promotion race by all means are naturally rampant behind the senses in a office.
This time, I want to talk about “Sontaku” which is Japanese representative workplace politics. Sontaku is a way you become a butler of your boss and take care of his/her intention. Especially a boss who has discretion of human affairs needs to be treated more sensitively not to be displeased.
Contents
Doing “Sontaku” is how you can survive workplace politics?
To begin with, I should make clear what “Sontaku” is. Basically, “Sontaku” need to satisfy the following condition.
“Sontaku” is how you can please someone
- by guessing what he/she wants from you
- without indication
- proactively
Reason why I write “someone” who receive sontaku here is because the primary meaning of “Sontaku” is guessing and understanding what people think of regardless of whether a person you talk to is your boss or not. Nowadays, the way of using this is more close to pleasing your boss. So this word is also used to the case when a boss guess what his/her subordinates think of.
In many cases, Sontaku is done by a person in weak position to a person in strong position. For example, in Japanese companies, subordinates somehow need to put themselves in place of boss’s feelings.
If you take an action while noticing what your boss needs beforehand, you are labeled as “you are capable”, and “you are attentive”. On the other hand, if you take an action without ignoring your boss’s intention at all, you must be labeled as “you are self-centered person” and “you lack cooperativeness”
Of course, there is a case when a boss put him/herself in place of subordinates’ dissatisfaction and hope. Manager’s capability is how he/she makes subordinates work well to make better profits so it is pretty natural for a manager to make effort to create good working environment for subordinates because this factor directly links to manager’s evaluation.
A good manager who can devote him/herself into the above effort must be respected by subordinates. In addition, motivation of workers in a section rises up. This factor also links directly to good results.
However, if a boss put him/herself in place of subordinate’s feelings, it tends to be way too patronizing like a boss says “ I give you a favor ”.
In contrast, if a subordinate put him/herself in place of a boss, it tends to be way more necessity like a subordinate thinks “I need to do this by all means.”
For example , in a company facing a serious problem of lack of manpower, if being answerable to a company for subordinate’s retirement or coming up against difficulties of business continuity because of subordinate’s retirement, a boss will be serious about trying to understand what a subordinate thinks about. But this is rare case. Mostly a subordinate looks more serious about trying to understand and please a boss.
Why Japanese people do “Sontaku”
Self-Protection
Doing “Sontaku” is for self-protection of all things. Mentality like “I don’t want to get someone’s bad side ”, “I don’t want to cause any troubles”, “I don’t want make anyone angry ” drives you to read someone’s facial expressions as a result.
And naturally, trying to avoid all the troubles that you can imagine, you subconsciously try to understand what a person needs proactively.
For example, when you join and start working for a company, you often made small mistakes on your assignments because this is your inexperienced field and you are still clumsy to how to handle on your task. Your boss always blames you for being awkward.
You have one colleague who entered a company around the same time you entered. He is really good at getting the hang of new things and getting in someone’s pocket, and is also attentive. Your boss has a good opinion of your colleague and compares you with him every time.
Your boss says to you “You are not attentive. You can’t win anyone’s trust with your attitude that you only do what you’re told by your senior. You can’t get a promotion unless you help your senior to work smoothly with understanding what he/she wants to do in advance. ”
You come to think if you are hated by your boss, one unhappy scenario crosses your mind that if your boss spreads his subjective estimation towards you around an office like gossiping about your not attentive working attitude around an office, it may make your position weaken and your evaluation lower in an office or possibly it may make you transfer to a remote place or it may drive you into the situation you need to quit.
Japanese companies are so exclusive to an outsider who come from another company after quitting. Knowing the reality that finding job is very thorny path, a person whose life depends on one job, he/she can’t make their steps forward to do challenge.
You come to think if you are hated by your boss, one unhappy scenario crosses your mind that if your boss spreads his subjective estimation towards you around an office like gossiping about your not attentive working attitude around an office, it may make your position weaken and your evaluation lower in an office or possibly it may make you transfer to a remote place or it may drive you into the situation you need to quit.
In Japan, lifetime employment is a mainstream in any period and it is natural for anyone to work until becoming at least 60 years old in the same company. Reading your boss’s mood and understanding what he/she wants all the time in a office is essential skills to survive in in-house politics. This is minimum know-how of how you can get a long with your boss in Japan.
The environment that you can’t quit easily and the fear you may get demoted are the reasons to make people to become a butler of their boss to protect their position.
Fear
Fear hides behind mind of people who do “Sontaku” for self-protection in many cases. The fear of being labeled as “not attentive person” by a senior or a boss is the most outstanding case. I talked that you cannot be particular under the circumstances that you are judged with too subjective dishonor evaluation by a person in authority one-sidedly
The fear that a boss doesn’t sign on renewal employment contract, the fear of an announcement of appointment that let you know the order of transferring to a remote place, which is more like punishment comes from worries if you can’t please your boss
I will introduce another example that tells us a person does “Sontaku” because of fear.
While ago, there was a news that a mayor arrested due to falsification of an official document about civil servant recruitment exam. A mayor explained the circumstance that he did it to suit the convenience of a voter. He was then busy on preparing for the next coming election. Collecting as many votes as possible to come back to the present post, he went in for injustice. This is also one of “Sontaku”
Until winning the election, the boss of candidates is unmistakably voters regardless of whether a candidate is a politician as of election. To win election strategically without relying heavily on destiny, candidates somehow suit the convenience of voters to the extent not to violate the law.
Voters hold fate of candidates so candidates seriously become a butler of voters. Furthermore, a candidate who have an ability of understanding what voters want without telling proactively can get very good evaluation from voters.
This story is needless to say for candidates of politics because publicly, doing Sontaku for voters to survive election is minimum necessity that candidates plan to do beforehand in the world of election.
Unless candidates get votes from people, going into politics is just a dream that doesn’t come true so they devote themselves into doing “Sontaku” because pressure from election defeat stimulate fear in their mind.
Desire for recognition
Response in a manner that you meet someone’s expectation is also “Sontaku”. Above two reasons of doing Sontaku give you an impression that a person who pay a trump of “Sontaku” is always a person in weak position. Of course, there so many cases that a person cannot help doing Sontaku because of being in weak position but it is not that easy thing.
Sontaku is materialized based on mutual relationship between a person who does “Sontaku” and a person who receives “Sontaku” so there is a case that a person who does Sontaku has some desires inside his/her mind.
This kind of desire for recognition come to surface as a desire to be rated high by a boss and other colleagues.
If a person has strong desire for recognition, he/she spares no effort to be rated high in a society. This type of a person is more suitable for being a staff officer of Army or something. Understanding what people want you from much sooner than someone indicate you is believed to be a elite skill to be able to win through a promotion race at least in Japanese society.
For example, in school, such a person gets perfect score firmly before being said to study repeatedly by his/her parents and a teacher.
For another feature, this kind of a person understands classmates think that they want to be quiet to an annoyed group making pretty much noise from a mood of classroom sensitively and give them strong warning proactively to get tranquility back.
Basically a person who naturally has potentially desire for recognition is endowed with the capacity of catching someone’s desire subconsciously and already knows if satisfying someone’s desire before being indicated, he/she get receives praise from parents and teachers. So depending on the people, this skill starts to be developed from when they’re only children who go to elementary school. Such a people become a master of Sontaku.
A master of Sotaku has high possibility of winning through a promotion race. But to try to satisfy someone’s desire at the same time makes him/her lose his/her way to know what he/she actually wants to do. In worst scenario, this will be on the way to identity crisis.
Why Sontaku is rampant in Japanese society
One of the reasons that Japanese society generates Sontaku culture is strong “peer pressure” that forces people to have cooperativeness.
For example, the following mental phenomenon is what most of Japanese have in their subconscious mind.
- I am worried unless I walk with everyone
- I may be neglected by everyone if I walk to the left path although everyone walks to the right path
Therefore, it tends to become follow-the-leader mentality. Japanese society is covered with cobweb called “Sontaku” and so many people can’t escape from it. Adhesive material named “peer pressure” doesn’t make people free, rather, cobweb twine around people if they behave violently.
Japanese economy is in the period of maturity and its growth speed is very slow. In this situation, it is very difficult for anyone who is even excellent elite to make good results every time. So they can’t take a risk of breaking off Sontaku network and are dead in water.
In Japanese companies, there is a command hierarchical sales targets named “Challenge”. This sales target must be achieved by everyone in the company as one. Employees of Toshiba which massive fraudulent accounts came out in the open must have felt peer pressure.
Although people working there felt they assisted company’s injustice, in order to achieve sales targets, they responded to unreasonable demand in the form of offensive manner by doing Sontaku to the headquarters.
The primary reason is, after all, fear to elimination. Japanese people are brainwashed from childhood that if being eliminated by an authority, they are believed to experience many difficulties for their living and not to be eliminated, doing the same thing that everyone does is only the right thing to survive in a society.
If fear of elimination is strong, people feel safe by belonging to a organization. The bigger and stronger the brand of a company they belong to, the more fear comes to people. Of course, employees of Toshiba must feel fear seriously towards elimination.
Weak mind that fear to worries of losing everything that people have piled up so far through their careers become the trigger for giving priority to doing Sontaku more than executing appropriate implementation based on the thoughts of moral. All the factors of Sontaku inspires fear and confines in a cage of peer pressure.
If you are a non-Japanese it is difficult to understand this unique Japanese culture.